On a sweeping turn, one of the wheels slipped off the pavement onto the soft dirt shoulder. The rear-engine car immediately lost traction, went into an uncontrolled skid and over the edge. Everything after that seemed to slow down. I was in the passenger seat as the car floated in the air, turning over on its axis. We had been bowling, and the two bowling balls flew around the cabin, seeking and all too often finding their target. It was a dark night, and I couldn’t see where the descent was taking us. Then I felt a painful, overwhelming crunch as the car hit the ground upside down.
Thank God it was over.
But suddenly, we were airborne again. Turning over and over as we fell farther. Then another agonizing crunch, landing on the passenger side.
There was no window by now, and I felt the ground brush my right arm, somehow not crushing it as the car kept rolling. Back into the dark air, turning over once more and landing right side up.
I put my left hand up against the crumpled ceiling, bracing myself for what was sure to come next. But it never came. My mom’s red Corvair Monza had landed on a flat spot on the steep slope and rested there. There was an eerie quiet of settling metal.
I thought I was thinking clearly. The Showmen were blaring on the radio: “Rock ’n’ roll will stand.” I turned off the radio. I turned off the headlights. The headlights were gone. I turned off the engine, which was no longer running. I guess I wasn’t thinking very clearly.
What about Vicki!?
My girlfriend, Vicki Wheeler, was upside down in the backseat. There were no seatbelts in 1962. She was just starting to wake up. As I helped her onto the seat, I could see her blonde hair was soaked with blood.
“Are you okay, Vic?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
It seemed to hit us both at the same time. “Where’s Steve?” she said.
I had let my friend Steve Lowe drive my mom’s car . . . but he was no longer inside. I jumped out and started to yell, “Steve! Steve!” Finally, up from the dark slope, I heard “I’m up here.”
“Steve, are you okay?”
“I think so, but it hurts when I move.”
I could see there was a house just below where we had landed. One more rollover and we would have landed on their roof . . . or through it.
Then everything started to speed up. The couple from the house came running. “Are you okay?”
Funny the things that come into your mind. Does everybody say that?
“I’m okay, but my friend is up the hill and needs help.”
I looked below toward the San Fernando Valley and heard a distant siren. I could see an ambulance winding its way up Beverly Glen to get to Mulholland.
I can’t remember much about the ride in the ambulance except thinking how much I had screwed up. My parents were not insured for another driver. Especially another teenager. All I remember after that was sitting in the emergency room with the left side of my face swollen up to, ironically, the size of a bowling ball. And my mom and dad running in.
In all my life, I had never seen an expression like the one on their faces. They had gotten the call in the night that all parents dread. In that moment, I realized how dire the outcome could have been.
“I’m okay,” I said. I think I was crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeated over and over.
My mom took my hand, and my dad, interrupting me, said, “Don’t worry. Just think about getting better.”
Vicki and Steve also ended up at Valley Doctors Hospital in Studio City. Vicki was treated and released. But Steve had a broken pelvis, and we wound up sharing a room. The next morning, I read Steve an article from the Valley News and Green Sheet, the paper I used to deliver on my paper route. The headline read “Trio Hurt in Auto’s Plunge.”
My mom and dad and Steve’s parents visited every day. Vicki came with some girlfriends from school. I remember Steve was embarrassed in front of the girls because he was in traction and had a catheter with a urine bag hanging off the side of his bed—you know, teenager stuff.
This being late spring, we both just wanted to get out of there for our graduation from Grant High School. I was out first, but only after they stuck a needle in my left cheek to draw out the swelling that would just not go down. Steve needed to be there for quite a while, but he hobbled through graduation.
There is a point to all this. I had screwed up big-time. And I knew that my parents would take a big financial hit. But even after I recovered, there were no recriminations, no “You’re grounded for a year.” Nothing like that. They knew they didn’t have to push consequences because I would push them on myself. They knew by this time they had succeeded in passing on to me the gift of conscience.
It’s kinda hard to explain. But all I know is that when I did screw up, which was a fairly frequent occurrence for a seventeen-year-old, the severest consequence was knowing that I had disappointed my mom and dad.
I don’t know how my parents instilled that in me, but they did.
It’s not that I was never punished. I got some spankings when I was little, all deserved. But as I got older, I think my parents’ discipline started to evolve. My dad took me and my big brother, Bob, down to Van Nuys City Hall for a tour of the police station. I think I was about seven. Bob was nineteen months older. We met some very nice policemen, and we responded to their questions with “Yes, Officer . . . No, Officer.” They took us downstairs and showed us some jail cells.
“Is it okay if they go in and see the cell?” my dad said.
The policeman gave my dad a little smile and said, “Sure, Mr. Selleck.”
Bob and I anxiously went inside.
“All right, lock ’em up,” my dad said.
Without a word, the officer slammed the door shut, locked it, and walked away with my dad, up the stairs and out.
There was a little false bravado between Bob and me, a smug “Yeah, very funny!”
After about ten minutes, it wasn’t quite so funny. After twenty minutes, not funny at all. Soon after that, we heard footsteps coming down the stairs. But no one was laughing. The officer unlocked the cell door, and my dad said, “I don’t think I need to say anything.”
In our little neighborhood on Peach Grove Street, we weren’t supposed to play baseball in the street. Don’t tell anybody, but all the kids in the neighborhood did anyway. Unfortunately, I got ahold of one and broke a window in our neighbor’s house down the block. All of us scattered to our respective little houses.
I asked my mom, “Are you going to tell Dad?”
“No, I’m not going to tell your dad. You are going to tell your dad . . . And no TV till he gets home.”
Well, when he got home, I told him straight out. He thought for a moment. I had no idea what was coming next. My dad said, “Thank you for telling me. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Early the next morning, he popped his head into Bob’s and my bedroom with his familiar “Up and at ’em!” He walked me down to our neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. When Mr. Rockwell answered, my dad said to me, “Tell him.”
“Mr. Rockwell, I’m the one who broke your window.”
My dad showed me how to measure a broken windowpane. Then he drove me to the hardware store, where we had a piece of glass cut and got all the supplies we needed for the job. And that’s how I learned how to replace a window and not play baseball in the street.
These memories are still crystal clear in my mind. And I think that’s the point in all this. The lessons you experience, not the ones you are simply told, are the ones you remember most clearly.
Another memory that’s crystal clear in my mind is going off Mulholland Drive. It’s kind of ironic that, a couple of years later, the Chevy Corvair was discontinued. Consumer advocate groups made sure of that. They said the Corvair had a tendency to roll over. To be honest, I’m actually not sure that’s the case. I drove many safe miles in my mom’s red Corvair Monza. But I can personally guarantee that it will roll over if you drive it off a 125-foot cliff.